What would you do for freedom? In Iron Grip: Warlord, the nomadic civilization of Atelia is being swallowed by the massive Confederation. It's a hopeless and tiresome battle; for every enemy Confederate that falls, five more takes their place. Outnumbered and forced to retreat into the heart of cities, a full-out urban warfare has begun that the Atelians will surely lose. As the vestiges of your world crumble and your morale sinks, the only hope for the future is you and your fellow warlords. This is your last stand. This is your freedom. This is your game.

Best Indie Game

Indie games, whether they be commercial or free, have always fought an uphill battle trying to gain some recognition within mainstream circles. Many have started planting roots at ModDB to kickstart their PR campaigns and gain some recognition. As a result of this, we're starting to see some impressive independent titles come out of the woodwork to share their development progress with ModDB's audience and build up strong communities around their games pre-launch. Here's the editors' best picks for the released indies that have graced us with their presence in 2008.

Taleworlds wrote: Mount&Blade is a 3D, open-ended, single-player, third- or first-person, computer role-playing game in beta stage of development, created and distributed by the Turkish development house TaleWorlds. Mount&Blade has a medieval setting, without any fantasy elements. Mount&Blade is notable for its emphasis on realistic cavalry combat, which was common in the era, but is largely absent in most RPG titles.
The player can directly control only one player character, which is created when a new game starts. A character class only serves as a template for future character development. Each "class" differs only in its starting attributes, skill points and equipment. There are no in-game restrictions on equipment or skill use based on class and gender. The maximum level of a skill and the use of certain equipment is linked to a related attribute. The player character's facial features are customizable. The face and hair can be changed at any time, should the player wish to do so. The player character may take sides with any one or none of the factions present in Calradia: The Swadian, Rhodok, Vaegir, Khergit, and Nord armies, or hunt down the various bandits and rogues that plague the region.
The gameplay is open, similar to games such as Elite or Darklands. The game currently has a skeleton plot and the player is free to do as he wishes. While combat is the main draw of the game, it is for the most part optional.

Celestial_Impact wrote: Celestial Impact is a team multiplayer FPS taking place on asteroids with spherical gravity. The game is unique in that the landscape can be deformed in every direction. Players can add or remove terrain during combat by aiming and firing a special tool called Dirtgun. Celestial Impact is a PC game developed in Sweden that started with a few university students having an idea of an unusual and fun game. The idea evolved into a larger spare-time project and has now reached a fully playable version.

Isotx wrote: In IRON GRIP: WARLORD, the first commercial game from Isotx, the player plays as an Atelian warrior from Warlord Sahrab's army. The nomadic state of Atelia is being invaded by the imperialistic Confederation and everything from their religion to their independence is being threatened. Due to its own internal weakness and fractured city-states, Atelia has struggled and largely failed to fight the movement. It is now up to you and a close-knit of rebels--either AI controlled or fellow players--to repel the invader and save Atelia. As a Warlord, you must use all of your skill to defend the city against the Confederate attacks. In an innovative blend of RTS and FPS gameplay, you will employ urban guerrilla tactics to fight off the hordes of soldiers. You must protect your city at all costs, by building defense structures, setting traps, and taking the enemy on yourself. Based on the Quake 3 engine, this project is the latest offering in the Iron Grip Universe.

Live_for_Speed wrote: LFS S2 is a serious racing simulator. No arcade modes, no steering aids - YOU have to do the driving. It is therefore highly recommended to play the sim with a wheel, because even though you can use keyboard and/or mouse, a wheel is what you use in a real car, so a wheel should be used in a serious racing simulator. Especially when going online, where fast reactions are required.
In S2 you can race alone or against the AI, but the real fun is to be found online, in multiplayer mode. Racing against real people is simply the best thing and LFS makes it easy for you to do so. There are also several online racing leagues you can take part in, if you are looking for something with a more competitive edge.
A serious simulator obviously requires a very good physics simulation to provide the thrill and fun of real racing. This is done by simulating all aspects that are important to racing. LFS S2 is the second step towards our vision of what the sim must become and already does a very good job in simulating real racing. Many racing aspects are covered - comprehensive setup possibilities, fuel usage, tyre wear, a lot of different surface types, intriguing racing environments, different car classes, etc. All these aspects make sure you have enough to practise with and spend time on learning the flow of the tracks. Additionally, don't forget to plan your pitstops - find out how much fuel your car uses on a track and how are your tyres behaving on any track, with your driving style. All aspects you will have to think about in real racing and as such you need to think about them in S2 as well.

S2_Games wrote: Savage 2 is a hybrid RTS-action game. Two teams--Beasts and Humans--square off in large-scale maps. On each team, one player is the "commander" and plays the game like an RTS, while every other player on the team plays it as an action game. Savage 2 adds upon the existing Savage formula by expanding the melee combat system, updating the RPG and stat-tracking elements, and adding an entirely new race--the Hellborne. The strong emphasis on teamwork, innovative merging of genres, and asymmetrical teams make Savage 2 a very unique gameplay experience.

another tough one. my personal favourite would have to be mount & blade, simply because I loved the feel of the game and it reminded me of my favorite childhood game - Conqueror AD 1086.

However, realistically speaking, I can see this award going to savage 2. The amount of work that was put into the top notch graphics, fantastic gameplay quality, the fast paced action and essentially the originality of the game make this a very strong contender.

None the less we shouldn't lose sight of celestial impact, they have already bagged most innovative multiplayer. I somewhat doubt that warlord will win, simply because their game is very similar to their mod and that sadly didn't last too long.

The only game I am rather unfamiliar with is Live for Speed, hwoever from the info I got on it from their profile, it looks like a fun game. But will it be strong enough to compete?

A very close choice between Mount and Blade and Savage 2. Both excellent games in their own right in almost every area. But the other 3 deserve their place in the top 5 indie game choices. Well done to all.

Savage 2 definately, their work and passion with the game is extraordinary, even made it free, really, really good game with dedicated developers. Even though none of their games became financial success (Savage 1 received MANY awards), sadly enough the game never became popular because of the marketing restrictions. I hope Savage 2 win this award and can make some recognition to the average gamer :).

I don't think CI can get an award too times so I don't think it makes it this time. LFS sounds good but it is geared for a specific audience. So I think it's fought out between M&B and S2. I would say M&B makes it since it has a well round execution.

They're all great games.....but Savage 2 is the best. Iron Grip: Warlord would hafta be my runner-up. :D I applaud the M&B devs for making it this far, though. Though they do need to lower the price a bit...:P

Editors tend to pick non FPS games so I see LFS get the prize (Mount and Blade could upset that). I personally would like to see Celestial Impact get it. But realistically it isn't the best product out of all of them. Iron Grip would be my darkhorse.

Yeah, Henley didn't have enough bandwidth/time to download the game again, unfortunately. He had to go with "found" footage, didn't realize it was from the beta until too late. Sorry! I dunno if anyone notices, but the order is a bit out of whack too. Iron Grip: Warlord should be second but whatever. Late night editing will yield occasional mistakes like that :P

i liked mount and blade a lot. it was entertaining. but i felt that it was a little bit too complicated for what i was expecting. also, i felt the combat controls were a little unresponsive. but overall, i think it's a really fun game. i look forward to some sort of a sequel

Mount and blade for me as well, with a few small mods like the custom battle sizer (change maximum battle size), you can have some really nice battles with about 300-400 troops running around at once...although it does get slow.

But even without mods, mount and blade is great. They will be releasing an expansion soon enough as well, it will include multiplayer, so that should really spice the game up just a wee bit :P
I really don't think the price needs to be lowered, you all could have purchased the game cheaper with the earlier versions, and that price was around for a long time, m&b is a quality game, still not perfect, but it has the quality that major production games and game developers can't achieve, yet they sell their games from $80 - $120AUD for a couple of hours of the same old same old with different graphics...

Savage 2 was ok, but I didn't like the feel of the game, it somehow reminded me of WoW (not a good thing) overall, even though most would argue that there are hardly any elements in the game that are like WoW.

Iron Grip I haven't played, I only played an old beta release on the Half life 2 engine waaaaaaay back, and it wasn't too bad a game, but wouldn't get my vote on this one.

Celestial Impact is great, I loved it when I played the initial release, all I did was build little forts around myself, or bury myself into the ground and cover myself up :D
Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to play online with anybody so I can't really comment much on the games actual gameplay and how it pans out.

I'd rather pay full price for a game like mount and blade compared to the crap games released now that sell for $90, because at least the indie games out there actually go for new experiences, where as your big name games are all the same boring crap.
I hardly think 20 pounds is painful to spend....